


i wanna drown myself in a bottle of her perfume

by buckybunnyteeth



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: F/F, Family Relationships - Freeform, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Girls in Love, Loving Families, Trans Character, recovering from traumatic pasts, trans girl armando ramon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-11-27
Updated: 2017-11-27
Packaged: 2019-02-07 14:23:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,143
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12843063
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/buckybunnyteeth/pseuds/buckybunnyteeth
Summary: Terri.God, Terri.Manda’s chest clenches at the mere thought of her.or; Amanda has been back for almost a year when it happens. When her heart starts beating again.





	i wanna drown myself in a bottle of her perfume

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sibley (ferns)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ferns/gifts).



"I think of you as the most beautiful, the truest thing in the world."  
\- Virginia Woolf, from “Night and Day,”

 

Amanda has been back for almost a year when it happens. When her heart starts beating again.

(That’s what Cisco will describe it as later, obviously her heart has been beating the whole time. She wouldn’t have been able to survive without it beating, does Cisco know this? She’ll have to check.)

In the time since she has been back she has been able to reintegrate herself into Cisco’s life with varying degrees of success. There are days where she cannot speak, cannot move or be seen. Those days were frequent and unending at the beginning as she was swallowed by all that she had done and had been done to her. She is a little better now, able to be a person for longer periods of time.

She lives in an apartment with Dante not far from where Cisco lives. She cooks and cleans and worries after her brother. She sleeps and eats and dose it all when she chooses, not when she is told. There is no one to tell her.

Her brothers are her foundation. Dante has had a hard time since she’s been gone, but he’s getting better now. He still has horrible taste in men, still has a new scheme every other week, but he’s not rotting away with guilt anymore. And Cisco, who grew so strong and kind without her, Dante says he’s smiling more than he ever has. Whatever consequences her resurrection may have it's all worth it to know its bought her brothers a semblance of peace.

And then there is the little family Cisco has built. He’s so good at building things, a mechanical genius … but these people are weird.

Joe and Cecile and little baby Bea are the most normal of them all. Joe is kind, he never yells at Manda when she gets things wrong, or when she goes silent. Cecile is the same, and she tries to feed Amanda whenever she sees her. Thinking about them makes something warm flare in her chest that she doesn’t know how to deal with yet.

Wally is a little harder to quantify. He’s eager to fight and save people and has been encouraging Amanda to ‘go out into the field’ with him. 

(“I can, uh, show you the ropes! This city of filled with metas- and I’m sure they’ve changed the streets and stuff since you’ve been gone too. It’ll be fun, Kid Flash and uh- Amanda. Kid Flash and Amanda!”

“Reverb. And no.”

“Cool. No wait-”)

Amanda hasn’t taken him up on his offer. She’s not ready yet.

Iris makes her chest feel tight. She’s always smiling, always just as kind as her father is. Sometimes she touches Amanda, lays a hand on her arm in comfort, but she never touches her without asking first. She takes her shopping, tells her about all the latest fashions, and when Amanda is ready she cuts her hair for her. Iris helps her feel like she’s something other than a blunt instrument. Helps her feel human.

Amanda can see why Cisco is in love with her.

Barry she has a harder time with. He is kind and soft-spoken around her, but he is also a speedster and the one her brother follows into battle. He’s goofy, but he has depths and Amanda doesn’t feel like she has ever seen all of him. She worries that one day her brother will follow him into something that is too big for him. She worries that one day her brother will die for him.

She worries that her brother is in love with him too.

There are others in the group but they aren’t as important. They are not on the list in Amanda’s mind of people she must protect to keep Cisco from breaking.

Amanda makes lists. Lists and lists of things she needs to remember, things she needs to protect. Secrets she needs to keep and things she needs to learn to forget. She is made of lists.

Right now, she is adding to the list of strange people her brother knows.

Her daily schedule is as follows; wake up. Eat. Check on Dante. Go to the lab if that is where Cisco is (adjust destination accordingly). Eat again at lunchtime, and call Dante if he isn’t within eyesight. Monitor the interdimensional weak points in the city, make sure she isn’t going to break back through, patrol the city for interdimensional incursions without letting Cisco know she is doing so and get back to the apartment in time for dinner and tv with her brothers. Adjust when ‘meta crap’ is going down. 

Today she wakes up, slips into a pair of ripped jeans ("Mom jeans." "Who is the Mom?" "Oh Manda.") and a Harley Davidson crop top Dante bought her and says looks 'Bitchin', hops into a pair of red sneakers. She cooks eggs for Dante, makes a few sandwiches, enough for her and Cisco, and then slips through a breach to the lab where she gives Cisco his second coffee of the day.

But, today, the rest of her schedule is interrupted by the arrival of central cities newest nuisance.

She is sitting in the lab, on one of the tables as she tinkers with a new version of Cisco’s Vibe goggles when the alarms go off. She freezes, going perfectly still as everyone else springs into action.

Iris strides in, pearliest white blouse and yellow pencil skirt cast in strange colours under the warning lights.

“Break in at Mercury labs,” a frown takes over her face, “and at Kord industries- and central city bank!”

“Oh, damn,” Cisco mumbles through a red-vine. Manda grabs his hand and drops the goggles into them.

“You’ll need these.”

Cisco nods and hotfoots it out of the lab as Iris opens the coms.

“Flash, Kid Flash we need you both and Vibe out there now! It looks like a coordinated simultaneous attack- cameras are down and police are on their way, make sure there is nothing at the scenes that can hurt them.”

“On it!” three voices reply. 

Manda feels when Cisco opens a breach and leaves the lab.

“Caitlin we’ll need you on standby in case they need back up.”

“Right,” Across the lab Caitlin stands up and begins to shrug into her blue leather coat and boots.

“Manda,” Iris continues, but her voice is softer now, “is it okay if you vibe the situation? I don’t want our boys getting surprised.”

Amanda nods. She straightens her back, closes her eyes, and lets the static overcome her.

Cisco has described what vibing feels like to him. Its sudden and violent, an upheaval. Manda thinks his struggle against his powers is what is holding him back. That’s why his eyes don’t flash like hers do when she vibes. She hasn’t bought this up with him yet. She doesn’t want to frighten him with knowing how powerful he is. She doesn’t want him to think about Darth Vader anymore.

For Manda vibing is like slipping into a calm, warm, pool. It flutters along her skin soft as silk and presses in around her ears, cutting off the rest of the world. The Bitch may have made everything else about her violent, but she could not touch this. 

She slips into the vibe softly and orients herself immediately. She sees Barry and Wally and Cisco, all in different parts of the city. Barry and Wally are up against men in masks with guns. She sees them disable the mean easily, without any bloodshed, and with the usual dorky jokes. But Cisco, who went to Mercury labs, she sees him standing in front of a man- but no it’s not a man. It’s not human, it’s something else, something synthetic. She watches her brother fight it, unleashing a full vibe blast at the creature so it drops the whimpering scientist it was holding. She watches the creature pause, and turn, and throw her brothers attack back at him, throwing him backwards into a wall with an alarming snap-

“Manda!” Iris yells, gripping her wrist tightly.

Manda comes out of the vibe and realizes she has screamed.

“Cisco,” she gasps, jumping up and opening a breach before her feet touch the ground, “Get to him. Now.”

Iris is peeling off orders to the speedsters as Manda steps through the breach and into the lobby of Mercury labs. She lands in between Cisco and the creature and tackles her brother behind a column just before the blast she saw was about to connect.

“Ack!” Cisco gripes, “Manda? What the hell?”

Manda pushes him against the column and peers around it at the creature.

It looks, in only the vaguest way, like a man. Tall, muscular and humanoid, it has a harsh angular face and head of slicked-back red hair. But its eyes are mostly black with white pupils, and its pale pinkish skin looks synthetic to her eyes. Its ears peak up sharply at the tops and its teeth look like bright white plastic. Its dressed strangely, black tights and a green shirt that is mostly made of a giant green collar and its red belt’s belt buckle is shaped like an A.

“What is that thing?” Cisco breathes, shifting out from under her hand to peak around at the thing, “Its already broken into the lab, taken some prototype that’s worth a billion dollars to the company.”

“Android.”

“What? It stole an android?”

“No. it is an android.”

Cisco’s jaw drops.

“You’ve got to be shitting me. Who builds an android, honest to god android, and makes it look like that?”

The android in question spins its head around and focuses its eyes on them. 

“fu-JEEZ!”

It sends another vibe blast at them, cracking the column. Manda grips the front of her brother's jacket and rolls them out of the way.

“It’s mimicked your powers,” she tells him as they scramble away towards the doors, and out onto the street “We have to get it out of the building, tell Iris to keep the Flash away from-”

Before she can say anything else two streaks of lightning zoom past her into the building.

“Crap,” Cisco sighs.

They get out onto the street, standing behind a car for cover, just as the two flashes are knocked backward through a window by a vibe blast, and are then chased out by a bright green streak.

“We can’t fight him,” Cisco hisses, “We need to retreat. Iris-”

“Vibe, The Speedsters, are they-?”

“Down, we need to get out of here this thing is like nothing I’ve ever seen before.”

“We can’t let it rampage through the city.”

“I think if we leave it alone it’ll act just like any other robber. It’ll just want to get away with its loot.”

“Are you sure?”

“No, but right now it's kicking our asses.”

Barry and Wally have recovered and are now swirling around with the android in a vortex, all of them equally matched.

“Fraaack,” Cisco breathes, “How do we fight this thing if it can mimic us all? I mean- anything we throw it at it will just throw back.”

“We don’t fight we run.”

“Oh yeah, cause that is working out so well for Barry and Wally over there!”

Barry is kicked out of the vortex first, landing hard and skidding along the ground until he stops against the car they are hiding behind. Then there is a vibe blast and Wally is thrown on top of Barry with a yelp.

The android stops running are stares them down.

Its does not speaks. Does not gloat. It simply stares, head tilting to the side as it slowly raises its hand at them.

“Crap!” Cisco yells, “It's going to- we have to get them out of-”

“Hey, ugly!”

A rock bounces off of the android head with a clunk, and everyone, Android included, turns to see who was stupid enough to throw it.

A gasp rips out of Amanda’s throat and her heart stops and then suddenly starts up again ten times faster in her chest. She ducks down behind the hood of the car. Cisco looks at her worried, but she can’t look back. She can’t tear her eyes away from the woman.

She stands straight-backed and defiant as she stares down the android. Dressed, despite the chill, in a purple cross tie crop top, a pair of ripped to hell blue jeans shirts, black boots that go up to her knees and have a line of spiked studs up the back seam, that match the spikes along the back of her fingerless gloves, and a boxy leather jacket. Her hair is dark at the roots but bleeds into red, buzzed around the sides and long on the top so it falls delicately in her face. There is an earring shaped like a dagger hanging from one of her ears, there is a large tattoo peaking out the bottom of her shorts and when she turns the back of her jacket is painted with the words; GIRL ALMIGHTY  
And Manda knows her.

The creature, obviously about as impressed with her outfit as it was with the speedsters, raises its arm and shoots the woman with a vibe blast. A yell bursts our of Manda before she can stop it, but it cuts off when instead of falling to the ground broken the woman takes the blast full on without getting knocked off of her feet. She grins up at the android.  
She grins and runs at the seemingly stunned android, jumps and punches it in the chest so hard it stumbles back, sparks flying from its chest at it mechanically whirs, and drops its stolen loot. The creature clanks, and whirs and then once again mimics speedster powers and is gone in a flash.

“Whoo!” The woman yells, pumping her fist in the air, “That’s right, ugly! You better run!”

The woman turns towards them as the speedsters get back on their feet and Manda ducks down further behind the car. 

“Wait?” Cisco says as he rounds the car towards the woman, “…Terri?!”

Terri. The name hits Manda in the chest like a freaking truck.

“…Cisco?!”

Manda slips away further, using her training to be completely unseen. She ducks and hides behind a bigger car, crawling under it so she can see without being seen. She sees her brother and Terri run up to each other and hug, twirling each other around as they laugh.

“Oh my god!’ Terri cries, “I had no idea you had powers!”

“Yeah, that’s why I’m wearing these. Secret identity, and all.”

“Pffft,” Terri pushes him back, punching him in the shoulder affectionately, “I’ve known you since you were an ankle biter, Paco. I’d know you by that smile, or these curls!”

Cisco spirals back as Terri ruffles his hair, squawking in indignation.

“Paco?” Wally asks, coming over to the pair.

“You know the Flashes?” Terri laughs, bright and beautiful.

“Oh yeah,” Cisco snorts, “I’m kind of a big deal.”

Barry laughs, and even wearing his goggles Manda can tell Cisco is glaring at them.

“Flash, Kid Flash this is- uuuuuh-”

Terri snorts and punches him again.

“Terri Eckhart, or Echo if you prefer.”

“Not into the whole secret identity thing, huh?”

“It's not my style,” she flicks up her collar and grins, “What was that thing anyway? I saw it from across the road at the studio and I thought I’d lend you guys a hand.”

“Some kind of synthetic human or android,” Barry says, voice modulated, “How did you hurt it like that, we couldn’t even land a blow?”

“Must be my powers,” her grin turns lips sided, “I’m the Bullet Proof Bitch, you know.”

Cisco roars with laughter as Manda’s mind reels. Bulletproof? What? Since when did Terri have powers, she-

“Well we should really get this thing back to the lab, I’ll talk to Tina about what the hell it is after we analyze it. Would you like to join us T-eh, Echo? If that thing comes back we could really use your-“

She has to get out of here.

She slips open a breach and gets out of there before anyone notices. She comes out on a rooftop on the other side of the city and curls up behind an air conditioning unit.

Terri.

God, Terri.

Manda’s chest clenches at the mere thought of her.

She met Terri Eckhart two years before she was taken. She was bright and bubbly and so so beautiful that it took Manda one afternoon to fall in love with her. And, surprisingly to Manda, Terri seemed to feel the same way. 

She slipped so easily into the little pocket of the people Manda loved most in the world. She can still remember how they all looked, piled into her bedroom on a steaming hot day. Dante setting up the camera while Cisco set up the soundboard and microphone, and Terri ran through a set of ridiculous vocal scales while draped in Manda’s varsity jacket. It was one of the first memories she got back after she shook Mordeth from her mind. The golden sunlight, how all of their hair was curling from sweat, how every word of Terri’s song sounded like a holy blessing.

Now Manda shivers in the shadows all alone.

She needs a better bolthole.

Without another moment of hesitation, she opens a breach and drops down into her brothers workshop at the lab.

Moving quickly she scoops up the essentials; a spare pair of goggles and gloves, her tool belt, the latest motherboard she was soldering, the scarf Iris bought her, the tin Scooby-doo lunch box that Wally bought her, her jacket-

“Hermana!” a voice announces behind her and she jumps, “Whoa, who, its just me no need get excited!”

“Dante,” she sighs turning to see her brother standing in the door. He's dressed casually, not at all like her should be for his job. Where he should be now.

“Thought id swing by for lunch with my two favourite siblings-”

“You got fired didn’t you?”

“Oh yeah.”

Manda dosen’t sigh, dosen’t roll her eyes.

“Their loss then,” she shoves all the things in her arms into the bag, “We’ll find you a better job.”

“No rush,” he shrugs, leaning against the wall casually, and if he were holding a soccer ball he would have looked fifteen again, “Though I suppose one of us should have a paying job … and be legally alive and all.”

She would crack a smile usually but right now she just needs to get out. She walks past Dante into the hall, only for his hand to gently catch her arm.

“I meant what I said about lunch, Hermana.”

“Can’t today. Need to go home.”

Dante frowns, obviously picking up on the distressed cadence in her voice.

“Um, okay. I’ll drive you.”

“No, !-”

The elevators at the end of the hall ding and before anyone can step out Manda shoots up to the ceiling, dislodges a ceiling tile and climbs up into the dark cramped space.

“Woah! Jesus!” she hears Dante curse below her, “What the fuck!”

Manda moves the tile back into position with only a small space left for her to glare down at her brother.

“You do not get to give me that look after-“

“Dante?” Cisco says as he appears next to his brother, “Who are you yelling at?”

“Um,” Dantes eyes flick up and then back down, “Uh, speaker phone?”

“You’re not holding your cell.”

“It works when it’s in your pocket.”

“Uh okay,” Cisco relents with obvious scepticism, “You’ll never guess who I ran into downtown.”

“Who? It wasn’t Legs was it?”

“Who is Legs?”

“…no one, who did you run in to?”

Right on cue Terri rounds the corner, beautiful smile spread across her face as she chats with Iris. Once again Manda feels like she’s just been punched in the gut.

“Terri!” Dante all but yells with excitement, “Holy shit, Terri freaking Eckhart!”

“Dante freaking Ramon!” she yells back before throwing herself at Dante for a fierce bear hug, “You absolute legend- what the hell are you doing here?”

“I was just here to drag my s- my brother out to eat a proper meal for once.”

“You totally just got fired didn’t you,” Cisco groans.

Terri laughs and it makes Manda’s knees shake.

“Still an experience I see, my brother.”

“Don’t you know it,” Dante grins, “What is the fabulous Terri doing in this dump?”

“Hey!” Barry’s voice calls from down the hall, sounding offended.

“Oh you know,” Terri flicks her hair out of her face, “Fighting strange robotic men in the street takes you to all kinds of places.”

“What?”

“I was across the road in the studio, I go out for a snack and what do I see? I see little Francisco Ramon and a couple of weirdos losing a fight.”

“Hey!” Cisco laughs, “That’s no- well no that is true.”

Dante laughs as Terri throws an arm around Cisco’s shoulders and pulls him into a gentle noogie. 

“Okay,” Iris laughs, iridescent in her delight, Manda isn’t sure she can handle her and Terri smiling in the same room, “How do you all know each other, I have to know.”

“We grew up with Terri,” Cisco explains, shrugging out of Terri’s grip, “She moved into the neighbourhood, just down the street, and Armando-”

They all freeze, and Manda watches with a shard of ice in her heart as Terri’s smile disappears and her shoulders slump.

“Their older sister Mando and I were dating,” she says in a soft, defeated voice like Manda has never seen her use before, “She and I…”

She trails off. Cisco and Dante share panicked pained looks.

“Listen,” Terri continues, eyes wide and wet as she leans close to the two men, “I’m- I’m so sorry I didn’t keep in proper touch all these years, but after what happened- after the memorial service I just- I just had to get away-”

“Oh,” Iris breathes, realization clear on her face “Oh- I’m-”

“Terri,” Dante cuts in, “We never expected you to-”

“Yeah yeah, I know but …. I really,” she sniffs, “I really …”

Cisco lays a hand on her arm, looking pained. They want to tell Terri that’s she isn’t dead, that she back and she looks like a real human too. Manda’s stomach rolls at the thought.

“Listen, boys, this has been really fun and everything but I have to get back to the studio,” Terri announces too loud as she begins to back out back towards the elevators, “I-I- call if that big jerk shows up again, or -just call. I have to-”

And then she’s gone. 

The world seems … dimmer, without her.

Dante looks up at the ceiling, eyes sad but soft.

“Hermana,” he sighs.

Manda takes a moment to school her face, wipe away a few stray tears, and then slips down from the ceiling and drops down between her brothers.

“You were up there the whole time?”

Manda just nods. It feels like all her words have dried up. Or not dried up. Bubbling under the skin, unable to break out just yet.

Cisco nods back and bites his lip.

“You know Manda, it wouldn’t be the end of the world if-”

“No,” she croaks. 

“Why not? You used to love her, Manda.”

“Cisco,” Dante snaps too late.

“I still love her,” she hisses, horrible stinging words breaking out of her before she can stop them, “I still love her but I’m not a person anymore. I’m a weapon, a knife, a scythe, a gun. I’m broken and horrible inside, rotting in my veins. Weapons don’t feel, weapons don’t love, and they don’t have girlfriends and they don’t touch people without hurting them!”

Cisco is crying, Iris looks close to tears and Manda doesn’t know when she started shaking but now she can’t stop.

A strong hand settles on her shoulder and she feels herself pulled into a warm side.

“Let’s go home, Manda,” Dante says softly.

She presses her head into her brother’s chest as shame and fear roll through her in tidal waves.

“I’m sorry.”

“No, no,” he strokes his hand through her curls, “Enough of that. Let's just go home and eat and watch The Little Mermaid. Okay.”

She nods and reaches out for Cisco. He takes her hand and holds it in his own against his heart. She can feel both her brothers heart beats and blessedly it grounds her against the horribleness of herself. 

She doesn’t say a word for the rest of the day. And no one makes her. She feels-

She feels so much. 

It hurts. She misses the numbness but that night she dreams of Terri’s eyes.

**Author's Note:**

> This is the first chapter of my fic for Fern about this pair who they introduced me to, i have literally been dreaming about terri and armando for months I just had to write it. I hope this makes a shitty week a little better. Next chapter soo and i promise a happy ending.
> 
> Armando in this is based on the Justice league of Americas; Vibe comics. She's recovering from being brainwashed and forced to kill for Mordeth aka The Bitch. I've tried to integrate Terri into the combined cannon of those comics and the show so i have it that they were childhood sweethearts before they got powers. Terri in this is also Argentinian, and a pop star. 
> 
> Also, I'm not 100% familiar with Terris powers so tell me if ive written then wrong, im only a small bean.
> 
> The title is from Girl Crush, listen to the cover by Harry Styles is a bop.


End file.
